Protests not newsworthy to Kremlin-controlled media

Following Sunday's elections to the Russian Duma, news
reports abound of the wave of opposition protests that have hit Russia's
current and historic capitals, Moscow and St. Petersburg. In demonstrations
unprecedented in the past decade, thousands of protesters have taken to the
streets chanting "Russia without Putin!" and calling for the vote to be annulled,
local and international press reported. And for the third day in a row, authorities
have sent police and interior military troops to disperse and detain the civilian
protesters, as the independent news website Lenta reports. As of Tuesday, at least 500 were in police
custody, including several independent journalists detained while reporting on
the rallies, the independent business daily Kommersant reported. CPJ protested
the detention of journalists, one of them a Kommersant
reporter, and demanded
their release.

According to the official tally,
Vladimir Putin's United Russia party got slightly more than 49% of Sunday's
vote, but critics and some observers disagree. Independent media and Russian bloggers
have been publishing accounts of how the number was boosted by the heads of
local elections commissions. Among the most noted of the alleged violations:
ballot stuffing and so-called carousels of groups of people casting votes for
United Russia at different polling stations.

But whereas independent media, in print and online, has
carried protest coverage (including tweets from the protest sites and police
stations), those in Russia without access to the Internet or independent
media have hardly heard of the clashes in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The reason
is simple: state-owned and state-controlled broadcasters--media with the highest
penetration in the country--have chosen to ignore the topic altogether, the BBC reported. As of
midday Wednesday in New York, news programs aired by Russia's Channel 1 and Vesti (both state-owned) contained zero reports
of the protests, CPJ research showed.

This shocking lack of coverage by the leading broadcasters
prompted Stanislav
Kucher, a journalist with Kommersant,
to cast shame on the news anchors of state media in an article carried by his
newspaper, and call on them to toss away their journalistic awards.

Here's CPJ'S translation of Kucher's words:

"When for the first time in a decade in the center of the
capitals of our motherland tens of thousands of people come to the streets to
express their protest against elections, those that the president discussed on
air, [and] you retain silence - this is unprofessional. When military vehicles
are brought to the center of the capital and traffic is paralyzed, and you keep
silence - this is also unprofessional. When [police] beat and detain your own
colleagues from the mainstream media, and you remain silent about it...this is
also unprofessional. ... You conceal from the millions of
people the information that at a minimum can influence their mood. You can toss
away all the 'TEFI' awards that you received for 'best informational programs.'
In these days you shame both yourself and the profession."

(The TEFIs are annual awards presented by Russia's Academy
of Television.)

Muzaffar Suleymanov, research associate for CPJ's Europe and Central Asia Program, has a master’s degree in international peace studies from the U.N. University for Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica.

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